Internet providers will soon deliver "strikes" to US subscribers accused of …

With the "Copyright Alert System" going into operation over the next few months, major American ISPs will start sending out "strikes" to users accused of infringing copyrights online. Sean Flaim, who has just completed extensive research on the topic, argues that the system has real benefits—but it needs close supervision. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Ars Technica.

Eight months ago, content owners and Internet service providers (ISPs) agreed to the Copyright Alert System, a "six-strike" plan to reduce copyright infringement by Internet users. Under the system, ISPs will soon send educational alerts, hijack browsers, and perhaps even slow/temporarily block the Internet service of users accused of online infringement (as identified by content owners). At the time it was announced, some speculated that the proposed system might not be legal under the antitrust laws. Were they right?

Recently, I completed a draft research paper where I explored the potential antitrust aspects of "six strikes" even further. There, I concluded that while the system has some promise for reducing online infringement, its private nature, combined with a lack of government oversight, raises significant antitrust concerns. It will require careful monitoring by regulators.

Power plays

Just what is antitrust law? If I had to explain antitrust in a single word, it would not be "competition"—it would be "power." The power to raise prices above a competitive level; the power to punish people who break your rules. Such power is something society usually vests in government. Antitrust law is in part concerned with private industry attempting to assert government-like power.

In a democratic society, people can exert some control over government power at the ballot box. Private power cannot be controlled with the same sort of vote. Rather, private power only responds to consumer choice in the marketplace. When the marketplace fails to function correctly and lacks competitive pressure, nothing keeps companies from exerting private power in ways that benefit them. This hurts consumers overall.

The Copyright Alert System represents a raw exercise of concerted private power. Content owners as a group have control over their product. They have leveraged this control to forge this agreement with ISPs, who need to work with content owners in order to offer content to their own users. ISPs, in turn, have power over us as users. When was the last time you looked into alternatives to your home Internet service? If you are like people in 75 percent of this country, only one truly high-speed broadband alternative will soon be available—your local cable television company. In most locations, that company has agreed to participate in the Copyright Alert System.

Given that Internet companies have the power to determine how—and whether—consumers can access the Internet, this makes the Copyright Alert System even more problematic. The proposed system flips copyright on its head. In a normal copyright infringement claim, the copyright owner must first identify the alleged infringer and then sue them in court. Once there, the owner must prove that the alleged infringer downloaded, shared, or publicly performed a work without authorization.

Not so in the Copyright Alert System. If a consumer gets to the point where an ISP is going to take an action, the consumer is given the option of participating in a private "due process" proceeding, provided they have $35 to spare. In the proceeding, the content owner is presumed to have both identified the copyrighted work correctly and correctly identified the alleged infringer. The burden of proof is on the consumer to prove them wrong. And the alleged infringer is even limited in the ways they can attempt to do that. In essence, the Copyright Alert System is an effort to privately rewrite copyright law to make an accused liable for infringement until proven innocent.

What justifications do companies offer for taking these actions? For one, the companies assert the overall economic costs of piracy are too high. Yet when making these claims, they continue to assert fuzzy numbers which have not held up to any serious scrutiny.

Further, implementing the Copyright Alert System is not "free" by any means. Investigators need to detect infringement, rightsholder need to oversee their investigators, and the ISPs need to implement a tracking and punishment system for users. Estimates range from $4 to $32 per notification sent, and those costs are not borne by the person receiving the notice. They are paid for by all of us, in the form of higher prices for both content and Internet service. In essence, the system places a tax on Internet service designed to benefit content owners without any corresponding benefit for the vast majority of consumers.

Another justification the parties have given: the educational nature of the Copyright Alert System is preferable to the coercive nature of copyright infringement litigation. This is a valid point. The merits of such an arrangement, however, are directly related to whether a person has been accurately identified as an infringer. So far, content owners have not always acted in a fashion that instills confidence they can correctly identify infringing users or works at scale. That's extremely problematic when creating a system which presumes that identifications are correct, and that forces consumers to prove that they are not.

Is "less government" a good thing?

This isn't to say that the Copyright Alert System is necessarily a bad idea, in general. It is possible—even probable—that educational alerts will both reduce piracy and keep consumers out of federal court for minor charges.

But the issue is the complete exclusion of the government from involvement; though the White House helped broker the deal, government power—and therefore democratic accountability and judicial oversight— are absent. Everyone agrees something needs to be done to lower the cost of copyright enforcement, but copyright is still a right that originates from the government. Ultimately that is where any relief for content owners should begin.

In her recent book, Consent of the Networked (read our review), author Rebecca MacKinnon discusses how many consumers are now residents of "Facebookistan" and "Googledom," reminding us of the power these two companies hold over consumers. But this power pales in comparison to the power exercised over consumers by their local ISPs, which control the very pipes that connect people to Google and Facebook.

Congress is the body that writes laws affecting interstate commerce. Antitrust, at least in part, offers protection against private companies doing the same. Recent reports indicate that the alert system, until now off to a slow start, will soon start affecting Internet users. Once it does, regulators must look closely to make sure the system lives up to its main promise as an educational tool rather than a system of vigilante justice.

Sean Flaim is a recent graduate from the Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law, where he specialized in antitrust, intellectual property, and communications law and policy.

133 Reader Comments

The important thing for them now is that you, the average person, will have zero recourse whatsoever. Even if the claims are false.

LOL after what, 5 strikes? At which point your bandwidth might get capped? Poor baby.

I think the real scare is for people who pirate and don't want to stop. Anyone outside nerdland who finds out their neighbor was using their router to torrent will lock it down and that will be the only strike.

People outside of nerd land will make a connection between receiving a 'strike' and their neighbor using their router to torrent? Those same people are supposed to have the technical capability to secure their router against intrusion by a nerdland pirate? Most people 'outside of nerdland' that I know have no idea what a router is (they pretty much uniformly own one, sometimes more than one), nor how to configure it, never mind how to do so in a way that someone who is inside of nerdland couldn't break in pretty easily.

We'll ignore for the moment practices such as WB's, which pretty much guarantee that people who didn't commit infringement against anyone get flagged for infringement, possibly multiple times, by a robot. We'll also ignore instances where the action which precipitates the flag may very well be fair use (I know, this never actually happens, but if we're willing to pretend that some random person will know how to secure their WAP, we may as well assume that some people might actually engage in activities which really are fair use).

I don't get a lot of the comments, it's not like Ars hasn't covered this system in depth back when it was created, and it's not like ISPs wouldn't issue warnings and terminate service on copyright claims prior to this. A notice and notice system is probably the most fair system for everyone involved. What concerns me is that this fight to protect free speech has somehow become fight to protect our right to piracy.

What I think people forget is that the internet is mostly privately owned. You are paying for a private distribution service much like FedEX or UPS. Do you have the right to send anything via FedEX including bombs and drugs?

FedEx and UPS don't have anything close to a monopoly, and their dominance is almost entirely attributable to efficiency and being well known. Parcel delivery has a low barrier to entry, while cable and phone networks have very high barriers to entry and often include municipal agreements to exclude competition.

If you're thinking of exclusive cable TV franchise agreements, those have been prohibited by the FCC for almost 20 years. AFAIK, there simply are no municipal agreements to exclude competition for ISPs. There are very real practical reasons why competition is largely absent, however.

Not worth their time? They'll automate the process so that they can click on a torrent, pull up a list of everyone up- or downloading and send out the notifications. Pressing a few buttons doesn't take a lot of time.And what happens if your IP is on the list in error? You'll be paying the fee to have your case reviewed, but will you be happy about the process then?

No they will not automate the process by flagging every IP since that would flood with ISPs with too many to deal with.

Ah, but did you really expect ISPs to validate every request? They'll just automatically pass them on.

Quote:

If your IP is on the list in error than that is only one strike. They have to allow a few accidental strikes for kids/open routers/etc.

Largely true, I feel. You won't be flagged in error too often, and probably won't get more than a strike or two that way.

Quote:

But as I said they won't be flagging over a single instance. They will likey go after P2P users who keep a dozen movies up 24/7. It's the uploaders that they want.

Why do you believe that? With BitTorrent, everyone is uploading. They might look for seeders, but everyone involved in a swarm is helping the global downloads, so why would they not flag them all?

Quote:

I don't have a problem with that and after seeing how many rich students pirated everything in college I think some enforcement is needed. Movie companies do lose revenue to piracy which means less tax money for local governments. Piracy has become too casual and there needs to be more incentive for people who can afford the media but are just cheap and lazy.

I agree with some of this - casual piracy has become trivial and almost impossible to catch. I actually do believe there is a financial hit to artists from piracy, although nowhere near the "one download equals one lost sale" the industry keeps portraying.

My issue is that this is terrible for the population, and sets a horrible precedent. Extra-judicial punishment where the media companies are judge, jury and executioner all rolled into one, and any appeals cost money to lodge while notices are free.

I'm not even impacted by this (I'm in Australia) but see it as a horrible way to deal with the piracy problem.

What concerns me is that this fight to protect free speech has somehow become fight to protect our right to piracy.

While some of the comments reflect this, doesn't it bother you that there is absolutely no responsibility or repercussions on the part of the accuser to back up their claim?

I mean, under this system, they could literally send every person who subscribes to high-speed Internet a notice, and you'd have to go through their process (which costs time and money) to avoid being charged with an offense.

Sure, they'd have to send you six notices, but I ask, what is there to stop them from doing so?

How easy is it to download something, thinking it's legal, and later find out it's not? I remember buying some mp3's a few years ago from a site that, as it turns out, was not paying the artists - despite claims to the contrary.

Would that be a strike?

I agree that pirates are going rampant now... but this "voluntary" process is exactly what people were afraid SOPA was going to do.

Given all that, from the logic you cite, I don't see how this would be in violation of anti-trust, because the collaborating parties aren't competitors: If Sony teams up with Comcast to spy on my traffic, and eventually block it, that isn't the same as say Sony & Universal, or Comcast and Time Warner Cable. So I don't see the conspiracy as analogous to the boycotts mentioned in your paper.

Collusion. A bevy of copyright holders who are competitors in their respective markets have brokered a far-reaching agreement with a bevy of ISPs who are competitors in the market for their services (if only marginally due to local and regional agreements and physical build-outs) to draft a set of behaviors and systems which materially disadvantages consumers. This smacks of the price-fixing case the FTC settled with the various recording companies a few years back. Sure, the details are quite different, but it's still a bunch of folks who are supposed to be competing AGAINST each other getting together to force the market to respect their wishes in a distinctly non-competitive manner.

Watch 6 TV shows and lose access to the best educational tool the world has ever seen. This sounds like a brilliant plan.

These people are delusional. They think that entertainment is far more important than education (REAL education) and the right to information, they have truly lost touch with reality.

This makes our enemies more obvious than ever, it's not just the copyright holders. It's the ISP's themselves.And you know what? i'm glad they are doing this in a way. Because hopefully this means we'll see some real innovation on interconnection technology and finally find a way to bypass ISP's altogether to connect to the internet. (all it would take is a "last mile" technology that is very cheap)

This WILL happen at some point, i just hope it doesn't take a decade or more.Once the people themselves control their internet connection the internet's true potential will be revealed, for now we're limited to what ISP's think internet connectivity should be for all of us, but once we're in control of our own 10g-100g or terabit connections we'll have no further need for them.

"f you are like people in 75 percent of this country, only one truly high-speed broadband alternative will soon be available—your local cable television company. "

-As with so many discussions regarding the internet in America, the problem could be mitigated by imposing regulated wholesale pricing, so that consumers had the option to choose another provider. Most developed countries do this. I seem to remember that America did this in the past as well (?). This is needed because pipes and wires are "natural monopolies" (i.e. it does not make any economic sense to run multiple redundant fibre optic cables down multiple redundant ditches in the same street). If there was regulated wholesale pricing then ISPs passing on accusations without properly investigating them to make sure that they were accurate would get a reputation for this and loose all their customers. This would not completely solve the problem, but it sure would help.

Them arabs with ak47s out in the desert seem to be pretty free . . . know what I mean? Where have all your freedoms gone? You know . . . the ones your uncles and grandpas died for? Shame on you lazy assed 'mercans . . .

I've yet to see a study that looks at whether the method used to determine you've actually downloaded something is sound.

All I've heard about it so far is that companies like Media Sentry connect to trackers and ask for a list of everyone involved in a particular torrent. If this were life and death, that would be pretty shady evidence as it relies on trusting the tracker. That's kind of like asking a crack dealer for a customer list. You might get one, but that better not be your only source for pronouncing someone guilty...

I've yet to see a study that looks at whether the method used to determine you've actually downloaded something is sound.

It doesn't need to be sound. You won't get your day in court - you'll just get whatever they decide you deserve.

There was a paper written by a couple of university researchers last year about how to spoof IP trackers with other addresses, so the processes involved certainly aren't watertight. Plus it was only last year that they were sending infringement notices to printers, etc...

Where the hell did this come from? This isn't France. I can't believe they can slip this s----tuff on us. I had never herd of this till now. The news never talks about it. What gives them the right to decide to do this? now ISPs can filter DNS and track users based on information from multimillion dollar companys like the infamous jerks at Viacom?

There is a huge issue here how do we know this will be fair and one will not get a "Strike" illegitimately. Is there an appeal process? Internet is a human right. you can't just decide to cutt people off for something that is not even a law.

What gives them a legal right to do this? Shouldn't we have to agree it's ok?

Someone should sue. Just sayin.

Piracy is wrong but this is even worse. This is like 1984 with big brother.

I always find it helpful to play the "follow the money" game when trying to figure out efforts such as these. So, what benefit is it to the cable tv/broadband providers to become the private enforcers for the MPAA/RIAA?. I can only think of the potential to help ensure that their subscribers pay for movies on demand on their service instead of downloading them for free via various methods. The music side seems to offer even less of an incentive to the ISPs to appease the RIAA. Is it possible that the MPAA and RIAA are still making so much money hand-over-fist that they can afford to just pay the ISPs to do their bidding? Or is the reason partly so all can agree to avoid legal expenses of lawsuits between the ISPs and the MPAA/RIAA? And how much money can the MPAA/RIAA really be losing? Here is a link to a great TED talk about those numbers:

Welcome to the United States of the Private Industry! After congress eventually realizes that they have lost control of corporations, maybe then they'll outlaw EULAs, TOSes, and revoke their citizenship and actually have the CONSTITUTION ENFORCED!

Your American Citizenship; brought to you by Coca Cola. Ahhhh that refreshing taste!

I think you meant brought to you by Carl's Jr. "F*$k you! I'm eating."Sometimes I wonder whether Mike Judge has a great eye for people or has hired some kind of precog as his screenwriter...

I always find it helpful to play the "follow the money" game when trying to figure out efforts such as these. So, what benefit is it to the cable tv/broadband providers to become the private enforcers for the MPAA/RIAA?. I can only think of the potential to help ensure that their subscribers pay for movies on demand on their service instead of downloading them for free via various methods. The music side seems to offer even less of an incentive to the ISPs to appease the RIAA. Is it possible that the MPAA and RIAA are still making so much money hand-over-fist that they can afford to just pay the ISPs to do their bidding? Or is the reason partly so all can agree to avoid legal expenses of lawsuits between the ISPs and the MPAA/RIAA? And how much money can the MPAA/RIAA really be losing? Here is a link to a great TED talk about those numbers:

If you'll recall from the original mention and coverage of the Obama Regime brokering this voluntary deal between ISPs and the MAFIAA, there was a strong implication from the Obama Regime of "that's a nice illegal monopoly you have there, shame if something were to happen to it; I'd make a deal instead, if I were you."

As to how much they're making so they can purchase the government, they're making plenty. Profits have been up every year for the last how long? Sure, CD sales are still dropping, but that's because the price is crap, most CDs are crap (and if you're really lucky, there's 1 good song on them), and ripping it (however fast it may be) is an annoying extra step (I still have a few physical CDs that I need to get around to ripping; mostly from local bands, raves, and other live shows). Meanwhile the convenience, price, and lack of DRM on sites like Amazon makes digital purchase far more appealing, and they _are_ making money hand-over-fist.

William Topping wrote:

I used to pirate stuff. But that was because I couldn't get it on digital form from the manufacturer.

Then when they did get round to offering it me digitally, it's "added value" was DRM. Not a deal I was prepared to enter.

Finally, I realised I don't need their shit anyway. These days I have far better things to do.

Let them send me a letter. I'm sure I'm not the only innocent party who will be receiving one.

Then I'm more than happy to find those other innocent parties, and issue court proceedings against the ISP for slander, and for whatever other laws I can throw at them.

TOS, or EULA is immaterial. You cannot accuse someone of something they are innocent of, especially if that accusation carries a threat.

I don't watch their shit. I certainly won't take kindly to them claiming I am prepared to "steal" it. I wouldn't wipe my arse with it to be honest.

Bring it on.

That's pretty much my first thought in regard to this. The system will only work if you willingly submit to their process. Take it to court, and they don't have a leg to stand on. The only evidence they _can_ have has been repeatedly proven to be almost worthless (IPv4 / IPv6 != person), and as you say, baseless accusation with punishment or threat attached is illegal in the US. Charging you to challenge that baseless accusation makes your case even stronger, and could be seen as extortion (they send a baseless accusation, you have to pay up to challenge it, and it's up to you to prove a negative, which is usually impossible, and certainly will be impossible for anyone but the more technically inclined).

Where the hell did this come from? This isn't France. I can't believe they can slip this s----tuff on us. I had never herd of this till now. The news never talks about it. What gives them the right to decide to do this? now ISPs can filter DNS and track users based on information from multimillion dollar companys like the infamous jerks at Viacom?

Actually, if this scheme isn't struck down in court as soon as some people sue their ISP over it (for a breach of contract or similar), then it's even worse than the Hadopi law in France: at least, the Hadopi commission had to include some kind of judicial oversight (however weak) to be declared constitutional, and we can at least hope the law will be repelled or changed after the next elections (unlike an agreement between private companies)...

Welcome to the United States of the Private Industry! After congress eventually realizes that they have lost control of corporations, maybe then they'll outlaw EULAs, TOSes, and revoke their citizenship and actually have the CONSTITUTION ENFORCED!

Your American Citizenship; brought to you by Coca Cola. Ahhhh that refreshing taste!

The important thing for them now is that you, the average person, will have zero recourse whatsoever. Even if the claims are false.

LOL after what, 5 strikes? At which point your bandwidth might get capped? Poor baby.

I think the real scare is for people who pirate and don't want to stop. Anyone outside nerdland who finds out their neighbor was using their router to torrent will lock it down and that will be the only strike. It will be the idiot pirate who actually gets to 5 strikes and then goes on TEEVEE to tell everyone about how it wasn't him and the how MPAA is out to get an innocent person (cue word's tiniest violin).

You seem to have a lot of faith in the media corporations to do the right thing. They have consistently shone they just spray and pray. They dont care about accuracy or accountability. You're guilty means you're guilty.

Some of us dont pirate. I HAVE gotten notice previously for downloading... A SONG I BOUGHT! i tolf them to go to hell. If they want to challenge me, i will comply provided they compensate my employer for lost man hours plus the fair of round trip air ticket amounting to $3000.

If you actually think they care one iota abt accuraccy, you are deluded beyond belief.

If any of you guys are lawyers can we do anything now to stop this before its started? Can we get an injunction? This is illegal, unconstitutional and brokered conspiracy. I will have no choice now but to get a good vpn now just to protect myself from my ISP. This is like a bottled water company telling my water provider what I can't do with my water and I will be shutoff If I don't comply or my electric company telling me if I use a gray market toaster they will turn off my power for a year. This is dirty and deceitful. I really hope the EFF files a lawsuit asap I want to join a class action suit now.

Some of us dont pirate. I HAVE gotten notice previously for downloading... A SONG I BOUGHT! i tolf them to go to hell. If they want to challenge me, i will comply provided they compensate my employer for lost man hours plus the fair of round trip air ticket amounting to $3000.

If you actually think they care one iota abt accuraccy, you are deluded beyond belief.

I've yet to see a study that looks at whether the method used to determine you've actually downloaded something is sound.

It doesn't need to be sound. You won't get your day in court - you'll just get whatever they decide you deserve.

There was a paper written by a couple of university researchers last year about how to spoof IP trackers with other addresses, so the processes involved certainly aren't watertight.

Salting a seed pool with false IPs is common with certain trackers. Adding an obfuscation layer into BT that internalizes some form of IP randomizer and purges the link between real and fake addresses wouldn't be too difficult either.

Funny how the rights holders always seem to equate downloading as Theft, Yet they will not let the police handle it.

Imho, this is not about piracy anymore, this is about the media corporations getting more powerful. they effectively would have the power to shut down anything they want. (and considering their track record, they will use that power.)

I agree. Big media really doesn't care that much about so-called "piracy" in and of itself. They're using it as a wedge to enable their larger goal of taking over the internet.

I agree with some of this - casual piracy has become trivial and almost impossible to catch. I actually do believe there is a financial hit to artists from piracy, although nowhere near the "one download equals one lost sale" the industry keeps portraying.

No, it's not impossible to catch. There is a simple solution: content providers should change their ways and offer Music/TV/Movies in a format different than scheduled shows on TV, i.e. a streaming/downloadable format with choices of size/quality, and varying speed for varying prices. Basically, take the BT trackers and turn them into something legit. Heck, for all I know they can even use parts of the BT protocol to ease with download speeds.

It's easy enough to create a basic (free) and a premium (paid) service, akin to the difference between public and private trackers. People just don't want to plain their day around a TV schedule anymore, or listen to music that's selected to them by radio stations.

I honestly believe that while some people will never cough up a single dollar for a download, most people would be willing to spend some amount of money to pay for subscriptions that work in a format similar to that of bittorrent trackers. If MPAA/RIAA don't want to create a new service that's congruent with the kind of technology and convenience customers have learned to expect from multibillion-dollar companies in the freaking 21st century, then I'm sorry but casual piracy will indeed be impossible to catch.

I might agree to something like this, only if the accusing companies have a similar "six strikes" system, where if they accuse people wrongly they get a strike against them, and after six they are temporarily suspended from the internet for a year.

+1

I am not falling for the MAFIAA & Their plan.Time to play some more whack a mole.

But as I said they won't be flagging over a single instance. They will likey go after P2P users who keep a dozen movies up 24/7. It's the uploaders that they want.

Why do you believe that? With BitTorrent, everyone is uploading. They might look for seeders, but everyone involved in a swarm is helping the global downloads, so why would they not flag them all?

THIS is not true at all you can configure your torrent client to not allow uploads. You do not need to be an uploader at all even during download mode. This is a bs thing to do for other downloader's but you can do this.

So, I have no clue about the law in the US. But, in my part of europe ISP's (and postal services etc.) have something that could be translated to 'independant carrier protection'. It essentially means that as long as it does not check any data (or letters) that it's users send or receive it can't be held liable for it's content. However if it were to start doing packet inspection (say to confirm that a user was using torrents) without a court order. Then it'd loose that protection and be directly liable for ALL infringement done in it's network. Is there anything similiar in the US?

I agree with some of this - casual piracy has become trivial and almost impossible to catch. I actually do believe there is a financial hit to artists from piracy, although nowhere near the "one download equals one lost sale" the industry keeps portraying.

No, it's not impossible to catch. There is a simple solution: content providers should change their ways and offer Music/TV/Movies in a format different than scheduled shows on TV, i.e. a streaming/downloadable format with choices of size/quality, and varying speed for varying prices. Basically, take the BT trackers and turn them into something legit. Heck, for all I know they can even use parts of the BT protocol to ease with download speeds.

It's easy enough to create a basic (free) and a premium (paid) service, akin to the difference between public and private trackers. People just don't want to plain their day around a TV schedule anymore, or listen to music that's selected to them by radio stations.

I honestly believe that while some people will never cough up a single dollar for a download, most people would be willing to spend some amount of money to pay for subscriptions that work in a format similar to that of bittorrent trackers. If MPAA/RIAA don't want to create a new service that's congruent with the kind of technology and convenience customers have learned to expect from multibillion-dollar companies in the freaking 21st century, then I'm sorry but casual piracy will indeed be impossible to catch.

A new business model like this one? Had to reinstall BitTorrent the other day to grab the latest BackTrack ISO, and it was advertising "L5," which is promoted through that site. It was actually extremely good, with remarkably high production values (if not prices; the donations didn't seem that massive, given how good the CG work was), and all funded via Kickstarter and other donations. As far as I know, everything on that site is distributed under creative commons attribution non-commercial license terms (and looking at their FAQ seems to confirm this, stating it's freely distributable so long as it's non-commercial, and has contact info if you'd like to engage in commercial distribution).

How are they going to stop anonymizers like Tor? The IP address posting the infringing content (all the MIFIAA usually has to go on) will have zero to do with the posted content save that the computer was part of the Tor network.

So, I have no clue about the law in the US. But, in my part of europe ISP's (and postal services etc.) have something that could be translated to 'independant carrier protection'. It essentially means that as long as it does not check any data (or letters) that it's users send or receive it can't be held liable for it's content. However if it were to start doing packet inspection (say to confirm that a user was using torrents) without a court order. Then it'd loose that protection and be directly liable for ALL infringement done in it's network. Is there anything similiar in the US?

So far as I understand US law, they would only become liable if they actively knew a specific individual was in fact definitely moving content whose license prohibited such movement. So no, just looking wouldn't make them liable; it is the responsibility of the content owner to police said content, and the ISP is only liable if they fail to take action after being informed, or knowingly promoting that activity (the justification used to go after Megaupload, for example; they knew it was going on, they did nothing to stop it, and they were actively encouraging and engaging in such activity themselves, according to the emails).

Any system that requires "careful monitoring by regulators" is going to create problems. Surely if the financial services debacle taught us anything it is that regulators policing a complex system is not a stable situation, or likely to avoid undesirable outcomes. As far as choice architecture is concerned, this does not seem like the optimal solution, leaving aside the arguments about the sales caused by word of mouth from downloads.

Sounds like some people are falling for the "6 strikes" is reasonable and the purpose is to educate people line of bull.

2 things I see happening:-Allegedly downloading an entire CD's worth of songs will get someone hit with 6 plus strikes all at once (1 strike per alleged offending track).-None of this will be handled very timely and strikes will be given a year or years after the alleged infringement occurs making defending yourself against false allegations that much harder.

That's right, don't buy their products. The wallet is the quickest and tends to be the most effective way to urge corporate change. In the case of the media industry they have a war chest and politicians in their pockets to fight this. That's why consumer choice will take longer. That and there are people complaining and still buying their products to provide them revenue.

An antitrust lawsuit might work since Comcast owns rights to some of the media they are trying to catch their internet clients infringing with. That will take years too since the media industry has a bus full of attorneys.

I have chosen to hit them in the wallet. I have not been to the movies in 7 years and all my other media stuff comes through Netflix. We cut the cord and don;t have to watch it immediately anymore. I will wait out their destruction and be there to buy what media I do want cheaply after they declare bankruptcy.